


Blood Dimmed Tide

by Medie



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-23
Updated: 2010-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's an email from Ash when Jo wakes up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Dimmed Tide

**Author's Note:**

> written for [](http://quarterturn.livejournal.com/profile)[**quarterturn**](http://quarterturn.livejournal.com/) for my Birthday Drabble-A-Thon.

There's an email from Ash when Jo wakes up. Before she gets breakfast, she sits down to read it. The subject line is blank and a quip rises to her lips, a joke about too much to drink that dies unspoken when her eyes read fall on the e-mail's contents. Her stomach twists, lurches, and she runs. The e-mail's words, misspelled and typoed to hell and back, loom at her from behind closed eyes.

Jo barely makes it to the bathroom before she throws up.

She ends up sitting on the dirty floor, the chipped and aged tile hard beneath her bare legs, a splinter from the door digging into her scalp. They're dead. Her mom, Ash, god knows how many more. They're all dead. The email didn't make any sense but it did and she just knows. Just like she knows that, somehow, Sam and Dean are responsible for this.

Ash's final words weren't much, didn't say anything about the boys, but Jo doesn't need that to know. She knows they might be responsible but it's not their fault. She understands that. But her Mom's dead, Ash is dead. and she hates them for it.

Which makes her laugh, the shrill edge of hysteria on it. She hates them and they're the closest thing to family she's got left.

Still, when she thinks about them, she looks at her phone and bites her lip. If Mom is dead, if Ash is dead, if they really are involved...

She almost calls them a dozen times as she throws everything in a bag, but she leaves her rundown apartment without doing it. If they are dead, she doesn't want to know. She can't know, she can't be the only one left.

-

When he showed up the first time, Jo thought Ash was a loser. Time hasn't really changed that. Ash is still a loser. _Their_ loser. He's also one of the best people, loser or not, that she's ever known. The jerk.

If he wasn't already dead, she'd kill him. She may still try. Jo's pretty sure that if she looks hard enough, she'll find a way. She thinks of Ash, of his last warning, and of her mother, imagines she went down fighting. She tightens her grip on the wheel and sets her jaw against the tears, not that she has to. Her eyes are dry.

-

She sleeps in the car on the side of the road, a hand on her knife. It's stupid and risky but she doesn't care. Anyone who picks a fight'll be sorry. Jo let her anger take over after the first mile on the road. It's burning through her veins, turning her soul to ash, and she doesn't give a fuck. She's spoiling for a fight.

Jo needs to make someone _pay_. She knows whatever killed them isn't going to have long. Every hunter that made it is going to be on its tail but she wants it to be her. She wants to be the one who finishes it off. It's her family, it's her right, and there's not a hunter alive that will argue that it is. She knows her parents' friends will try to stop her.

She almost wishes they could.

-

The roadhouse is in ruins. When Jo sees it, everything becomes real. Cops and firemen are swarming the place so she doesn't stop. She can't. The car is full of things she doesn't have the control to explain right now. She keeps on going and finds a place to hide it.

When she goes back, it's on foot.

The cops stop her before she can get close. The rookie who grabs her arm looks surprised when she twists free, breaking his grip with a trick a hunter in Dallas taught her.

She cries when she tells them who she is, that it was her home, but the tears are fake. They accomplish what she needs them to do, the police tell her what she needs to know and then they give her a moment alone with Ash's body.

Her mother hasn't been found yet and something that might be hope uncurls in her belly.

Ash is cold to the touch and she shivers. She tries to think of something important to say, something that he can take with him, but her mind goes blank and she just sits there, patting a cold arm awkwardly.

When one of the officers comes back, worry in his eyes, she looks at him and asks around a sob, "Where's his computer?"

-

She ends up having to steal it. Someone leaves the truck with the evidence unattended for a moment and she sneaks it out.

Sitting in her car, with the damn thing on her lap, she tries to coax it back to life.

When it fizzles and refuses to start, Jo hits it and jabs a sharp edge into her hand. It doesn't even break the skin but when she looks at the red mark on her hand, it blurs with tears and she hiccups out a sob.

It's a long time before she stops crying and when she does, she hears a voice from behind her.

"So, yeah, that being a ghost thing?" Ash leans forward from the backseat. "It's pretty sweet."


End file.
